“My!” exclaimed Mrs. Beauchamp, following with her eyes the splendid robe with its gold stomacher, as it was thrown carelessly aside in order to give her a chair. “I expect it looks as if it was made yesterday. I do wish, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, that if we go all together to-night to Judge Johnson’s, you would just wear that gown — it is first-rate elegant, and I expect there’s nobody so stupid as not to see that — and don’t you mind its being hot weather, Mrs. Allen Barnaby — we can learn you to fix the things under, so that you will hardly feel the difference.”
“Most assuredly I will wear that dress, if you approve of it, my dear Mrs. Beauchamp,” was the obliging reply, but spoken with the sort of dignified indifference which a queen might have shown upon a similar occasion.
Mrs. Allen Barnaby now took her new note-book and pencil out of her table-drawer, and sitting down before it, said in a tone which formed a charming contrast to that in which she had spoken of her dress —
“May I ask you, my dearest madam, to repeat to me a few words of what you were saying just now? This will amply suffice to recall the general bearing of your admirable and unanswerable argument.”
“I expect that what I was saying was about the ridiculous impossibility of republican gentlemen and ladies doing for themselves without the assistance of niggers. And what I think is the best argument of all, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, is just this — I want the abolitionists to be pleased to tell us which they calculate is the greatest sin; the letting black heathen nigger creturs what grows wild in their own woods, for all the world like so many painters and pole-cats, I want to know, I say, whether it’s wickeder to let them do the work of the Union, or to put it upon the gentlemen and ladies of the republic to do it for themselves, and them the very people that the immortal Washington fought for? The very people who got done finished the glorious 4th of July work, and that now stands in the face of all Europeyans as the pattern people of the World. Which of the two is it that ought to do the dirty work? Is it the heroes of the Stars and the Stripes, or is it the nigger slaves what belongs to them?”
Mrs. Beauchamp said all this slowly and deliberately; and the more so, as she observed that her friend was earnestly engaged the while in writing.
As soon as the sentence had reached its conclusion, Mrs. Allen Barnaby raised her eyes, fixed them solemnly on the face of her eloquent and animated companion, and having gazed at her for a moment, exclaimed —
“I never did; no, never in my whole life, hear anything put so clear and convincing as that. Why, anybody that doesn’t see the truth of it, must be as stupid as the dirt under their feet!”
“No, no; it is not so much stupidity, my dear Mrs. Allen Barnaby,” replied the patriotic lady, “as downright good-for-nothing wickedness — they do all see it — they MUST see it — they MUST know that a white man, a white American republican, is better than a nasty, filthy, black nigger slave — but that’s the shocking part of the business, my dear lady. They see it, and yet they won’t say so, on account of their poisonous party spirit. And it’s just that, which threatens the safety of the finest part of the Union, and the only part sufficiently advanced in the elegances of civilisation to get themselves looked up to by Europeyans.”
This was said with so much vehemence, so much bitterness, and such heightened colour, that the acute Mrs. Allen Barnaby saw at once how very near, and how very important a subject they were discussing, and she quietly determined to act accordingly. She raised her hand to her forehead, which she pressed forcibly, as if to still its painful throbbings. She sighed, then sat motionless awhile, then sighed again, and at length, in a voice as deep and solemn as that of Mrs. Siddons herself, she said —
“I feel that this important, this awfully important subject excites my mind too strongly. It will require many solitary hours of deep thoughtfulness to represent it to the world in the light in which it ought to be viewed. I see all — all NOW — as clearly as the sun at noon-day, and it shall not be my fault if Europe does not see it too.”
“Then you see it as I do, my excellent, clear-headed Mrs. Allen Barnaby? You range yourself on the side of the persecuted slave-holders?” exclaimed Mrs. Beauchamp.
“I do, indeed,” replied the authoress, in a tone of the most dignified decision.
“Then if I don’t prove myself worthy of such a friend, may I never be waited upon by a slave again,” returned Mrs. Beauchamp, suddenly rising. “And now, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, I must leave you, for I have many things to do. I hope we shall enjoy our party to-night — I am told it is to be a very gay one.”
“You are aware, my dear madam,” said our traveller, remembering her husband’s hint, “that we English ladies never pay visits unaccompanied by our husbands.”
“And it does you honour, ma’am, great honour. The ladies of the Union are first-rate particular in that line themselves. In course, my friends will expect the company of the major, and not only that, I can tell you. The whole party of a lady of your views will be welcome, go where you will, in this part of the country, and that if you made up altogether half-a-score, instead of half-a-dozen.”
“You are exceedingly kind and polite,” replied Mrs. Allen Barnaby, feeling to her very fingers’ ends the strength of her present position, and only hesitating in her acceptance of this wholesale hospitality, from thinking it possible that she might turn the glowing sentiment of gratitude she had excited, more exclusively to her own profit— “exceedingly obliging, indeed. But I do not think there is any necessity to trouble you with such a very large party. Our good friends, the Perkinses, are certainly the best creatures in the world, and I am only too happy to have them with me — in attendance upon me, I might in fact say — but there is no occasion whatever to ask for their being invited on the present occasion. It may be a check, perhaps, on future hospitality.”
“You are very considerate and thoughtful, my dear ma’am,” replied Mrs. Beauchamp, “and perhaps it may be as well—”
At this moment Madame Tornorino entered her apartment, and asking in her usual unembarrassed manner what they were talking about, was immediately made acquainted with the point they were discussing..
“How can you be so abominably ill-natured, mamma?” said the bride with some vehemence, “when you know Matilda is my particular friend? Pray ma’am, get her invited if you can, for I shall have no fun if she doesn’t go. As to Louisa, indeed, she may just as well stay at home, for she is too dull for anything.”
Mrs. Beauchamp declared Madame Tornorino was the liveliest young lady she had ever seen, but added that she could not stay another minute to listen to her, as she had forgotten to explain properly to her friend Mrs. Judge Johnson about who she was to have the happiness of seeing, and she must write to her again directly. And she did write to her concerning the large party of additional guests whom she requested her to invite, but not again inasmuch as she had never before written a word upon the subject, having waited, as before stated, for some satisfactory proof of the Allen Barnaby race being worthy of the promised honour. But on this point assurance had indeed become doubly sure.
“Nobody who knew anything of the higher classes in any country could doubt for a moment (as she told Mrs. Judge Johnson) that such dresses must belong to a real lady, but what,” she added, “was that compared to the high-minded feelings, and the extraordinary abilities she had shown upon the subject so near to all their hearts?”
In short, she explained her motives so clearly, and expressed them so well, that as quickly as the black messenger could go and return, Mrs. Beauchamp was in possession of a note that authorised her to bring with her the five friends she had named.
“The five friends?” said Annie, when her mother communicated the note to her.
“Yes; all you know, except that poor melancholy-looking one, that does not seem as if she could take pleasure in anything.”
“The eldest of the two Miss Perkinses you mean?” said Annie.
“Yes, my dear.”
“Well, then, mam
ma, I shall stay at home with her,” said the young lady, with all the pertinacity of a spoiled child.
“You stay at home, Annie? My daughter, you must be out of your wits to say so. I should like to know what father would say to that?”
But the young lady persisted, and, as generally happens in such cases, the mamma gave way; Miss Louisa was taught to consider herself invited, and Mrs. Beauchamp made up her mind to smuggle her in among the rest, or if challenged as to their numbers, to declare that it was a blunder of her foolish Annie’s.
It so chanced that this little debate between Mrs. Beauchamp and her daughter took place in the great saloon, while some few of the boarders were waiting there in expectation of the dinner-bell, and among them was Mr. Frederic Egerton. This young man had been vacillating a little respecting his immediate departure from New Orleans. It had occurred to him that he had not yet seen enough of the singular forest around it, with its rich Palmetto shrubs, and its heavy pendent moss; and he had pretty well made up his mind to stay another week.
He was one of those who had been honoured by a verbal invitation from the honourable Judge Johnson himself, for the party of the evening; but he had prudently given an uncertain answer, and in truth had decided upon avoiding so warm a ceremony. But his curiosity was now piqued to know why that little obstinate, thorough-bred American girl, insisted so rudely and so vehemently, upon being accompanied by that deplorable-looking Miss Perkins.
“She has got some horribly vulgar American joke in her head, I am quite sure of it,” he muttered to himself. “And if I am broiled for it, I will certainly go, in order to find out what it is. How I do detest American jokes!”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE drawing-rooms of Mrs. Judge Johnson, like many others in New Orleans, were large, lofty, and handsome; and, on the present occasion, very tolerably lighted, so that Mrs. Allen Barnaby and her party felt, on entering them, all the delight of reviving hope for the future. The rooms were already very nearly full, Colonel and Mrs. Beauchamp being always very late, owing to the gentleman’s evening nap, which nothing was ever permitted to interfere with. But this circumstance only added to the gratification of our party, proving to them at once, by one heart-cheering coup-d’œil, that they were, as Mrs. Allen Barnaby emphatically expressed it, “Once more in the land of the living.”
“Isn’t it a comfort, Patty,” said she, making a sudden step forward, and clutching her daughter’s arm, “isn’t it a comfort to see so many full-dressed people again? I swear that I dreamt half-a-dozen times at the very least, when I was aboard ship, that the devil, or something like him, came and told me I should never put my foot in a ball-room again. And you see that dreams do go by contraries. Isn’t it delightful, Patty?”
“Lor, mamma, how you do pull me!” said Patty, in return, endeavouring to withdraw herself from the maternal grasp, in order not to be separated from her husband, who was drawing her forward. “Yes, yes, to be sure, it is very delightful — only let me go.”
At this moment Mrs. Judge Johnson, a very thin lady of about five-and-thirty, came forward from the crowd that surrounded her, and to whom she was giving in the strictest confidence a few hints as to who was coming, with all the interesting particulars now attached to the names of Allen Barnaby.
The interest and curiosity thus excited, was of the most animating kind, and produced so evident a desire to behold the celebrated heroine of the tale, that Mrs. Allen Barnaby had the exquisite gratification of finding herself the object upon which every eye was fixed. Perhaps her heart had never beat so joyously since the moment of her first introduction to Lord Mucklebury! With the acuteness which made so remarkable a feature in her character, she saw at a single glance what was going on, and understood it, too, completely.
“Do you see, Donny? — do you see?” she whispered in the ear of her husband, on whose arm she was now stalking forward with indescribable dignity to receive the welcome of her hostess. “Don’t they all look as if they were ready to worship me? I have not told you yet all that I have been hearing and saying about the niggers.”
Mrs. Judge Johnson having now succeeded in getting within speaking distance of her illustrious guest, made a courtesy, at once becoming the dignity of a judge’s lady and the cordial hospitality of a Louisianian patriot, upon receiving a lady about to write a book on the principles avowed by Mrs. Allen Barnaby, and which were already pretty generally known throughout the room.
“I can’t be thankful enough, I’m sure, ma’am, to my obliging-friend Mrs. Colonel Beauchamp, for bringing me and the Judge acquainted with a European lady of your standing and great ability. There has been a great deal of ill-blood brewed, and evil seed sown between our two countries, by the vile abominable lies and slanders that some of your travelling authors have propagated against us; and to such a lady as you are, I expect this must be as hateful as it is to us. But if what we hear of you is true, ma’am, which we cannot doubt, seeing it comes from Mrs. Colonel Beauchamp, of Big-Gang Bank, if all the good we hear of you is true, you shall find that we are not people to take up prejudices against all, for the faults and the crimes of some.
“You will find yourself as much honoured here, Mrs. Allen Barnaby, as if you were a free-born citizen of our glorious soil. We have no prejudices against the English, notwithstanding all the ill they have done us. All we ask at their hands is a fair and honest account of the glories of our unrivalled government, and the splendour of our institutions, and this is just what we never get from them — for it is a common saying among us, that the bigness of their lies is in proportion to the littleness of their country. But by you, ma’am, we expect to be treated differently, and different, as you will find, will be the return. And this honourable gentleman is, I expect, the major, your husband. He is heartily welcome, ma’am, for your sake — and so are all the rest of the ladies and gentlemen, and would be if there was double the number. Just in time, too, here comes the honourable Judge Johnson, my husband. Judge, this is the lady from England, as we were talking of but now. You remember,” and she whispered something in his ear. “And this is a major of England, her husband, and these are her sons and daughters, I believe, or her very particular friends; all come out to travel with her, and to help her, may be, in giving a fair and just account of us at last.”
Mrs. Judge Johnson was one of those ladies who, when they begin a speech, never seem to know how to leave off again. It is probable she would not have ended here, had not the Judge began to speak himself; and whenever this happened, she immediately ceased — an example which it would be well if many ladies, of many countries, followed.
The Judge, however, had certainly a particularly good right to the privilege thus accorded him, because it was very rarely that in his own house he spoke at all. He was a senator, and in the chamber of the legislature was celebrated for his eloquence; but elsewhere, he was, generally speaking, a very silent man. He was one of those who had, with the utmost consistency of purpose and unvarying steadiness of principle, persevered in advocating the righteousness of the slavery system against all the attacks made upon it by those whose notions of freedom, as a national characteristic, were founded on rather a broader basis than his own. It was he who, with the most constantly sustained and most acrimonious vehemence had, through session after session, brow-beat, abused, and ridiculed the bold men who had ventured to attack this darling idol of the slave states; and he was reverenced accordingly by those who worshipped it.
This honourable gentleman almost rivalled his lady, though with fewer words, in expressing the height, length, and breadth of the affection and esteem which he ever held ready to bestow on all persons willing to come forward in support of what he was wont to Call “HIS PRINCIPLES.”
Men of all lands, when they talk of their principles, generally look conscientious and sublime, and so did the honourable Judge Johnson. You might have thought, to look at him when he was haranguing on the immutable nature of right; of the heaven-born holiness of justice; of the sinful weak
ness of permitting vacillating laws, and untried innovations, to sap and undermine the venerable institutions of the republic, that it was a martyr who was preaching in support of a holy but painful doctrine, which none but the steadfastly pure and holy-minded had courage to defend. And, accordingly, he was universally characterised by every citizen who possessed a slave throughout the Union, “as one of the worthiest and most high-minded men that ever lived — as true as steel, and as honest as the day.”
And those who hung all their hopes of continued prosperity upon the system he supported, might well speak thus of him — for if he was right there, he was wrong in nothing else, in nothing, at least, in which this principle was not so vitally mixed as to make part and parcel of the thing itself. He was himself a strict liver in all ways. But, if it chanced that any instances came before him of the licentious immorality which inevitably arises from the monstrous “union in partition” which this fearful system produces, his strict morality seemed to melt away, like wax before the sun, and till he was again heard to speak upon some theme where this did not interfere, the honourable Mr. Judge Johnson might be mistaken for the most licentious man alive.
Of all this, however, Major and Mrs. Allen Barnaby knew very little, and of course, cared considerably less. They were both all bows, amenity, and smiles. The lady moved her plumes, shook her perfumed locks, and declared that New Orleans seemed to her a perfect paradise.
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